Lycos subsidiary Ybrant Digital Media announced Thursday that it’s rebranding itself as Brightcom Media -- complete with a new tagline, site and
logo.
The Tel Aviv-based company is also expanding into the U.S. and APAC markets.
The rebrand (new logo on left) aims to make the company's different assets work together as a holistic offering and also put its tech front and center.
Brightcom CEO Gali Arnon
said when she joined the company a year ago, she realized that with its many subsidiaries and identities, Ybrant had a disparate
narrative. There was a common factor that united all the elements: the combination of tech and service, she said.
"I think this is one thing that is
part of our DNA," she said. "[We're] a global company working in the programmatic world, but we still have very strong human connections."
On the programmatic
front, Brightcom will expand its advertising product portfolio, introducing a header bidding and in-view solution, with ads that begin to play when the unit is more than 50% in-view.
"Developing an in-house header-bidding solution was almost an instinctive choice on our part," said Arnon.
"It levels the playing field to the benefit of the publisher. It raises their fill rate, it's easier to manage and ultimately, it upgrades
their ability to monetize." As for the APAC expansion, Arnon said the company just expanded to Singapore and the Philippines. There's huge potential in
expanding in the APAC markets, Arnon said, and the company has the skills and tech to do it.
In the coming months, Brightcom will focus on the U.S. presidential election and offer
specific audience segments for digital ads. The company is also going to leverage its relationships with owned-and-operated sites like humor site Cheezburger, which Literally Media, a company
that’s part of Brightcom's group, acquired earlier this year. Acquisitions like these put the company in "a very strong position in the millennial vertical," Arnon said.
Brightcom's
clients include P&G, Pepsi, the BBC, MTV, Turner, Mac cosmetics, Western Union, HBO, The New York Times, Comcast, Microsoft and Nickelodeon.
Brightcom parent company
Lycos announced its intent to acquire Austrian company TriTelA Gmbh, which owns mysms messenger and the tech platforms SPH Wien and Kika Social.